When the water got up to her knees, Sharon Hills knew it was time to flee her rental property in a low-lying new estate in Bundaberg's western suburbs. At 1.30am, with her four children in tow, the single mother got in the car and drove nervously down a 30 centimetre-deep creek that had been her concrete driveway.

The 41-year-old had timed it right - getting out before it was too late. ''I knew if we waited we would be gone,'' she says.

Many Bundaberg residents weren't so lucky and became trapped in the north of the city - a notorious flood zone - as they waited too long as ex-cyclone Oswald hovered over the region on Saturday. Helicopters had to be brought in to rescue 1300 people, including hundreds winched from rooftops or in waters using a rescuer dangling on a cable underneath the helicopters.

At Bundaberg West the water surged up the banks of the nearby Burnett River and swiftly rose through Hills's brick home within minutes of her leaving. The smelly brown tide wiped out her furniture, all her electronic goods and anything else she couldn't carry, leaving her with an insurmountable damage bill.

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On Thursday, as the children played on the driveway with the photos they had managed to salvage, she said: ''I didn't have insurance. I just didn't have time with the job and everything. And it would be too expensive anyway.'' She was left wondering how such a tragedy could have happened and whether such devastation could have been avoided.

''Someone came through here saying something about the flood levels and how the houses were supposed to be right for 11 metres well above the floor. They said someone's going to pay. I would like to know if that's right.''

Bundaberg flood

It's a question many are likely to be asking. Over the past week a vast swathe of the east coast, stretching from Cairns to the mid-north coast of NSW, was swamped by the remnants of tropical cyclone Oswald.

The extreme weather caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and left six people dead, including a three-year-old boy who was hit by a falling tree after going out with his mother to look at floodwaters in Brisbane.

It smashed rainfall records up and down the coast and surprised weather experts with its endurance.

''The most exceptional feature of this storm is the extent of extremes along a very long distance of coast,'' Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said earlier in the week.

West of the sugar town of Bundaberg, 204 millimetres of rain fell in 24 hours to 9am on Sunday, beating the previous records, according to Trewin.

Throughout the week more rainfall records tumbled as the system drifted south over the border to record extreme falls near Tamworth.

In Brisbane, the deluge led to releases from the city's flood mitigation and water supply facility, the Wivenhoe Dam. Flooding in some low-lying areas including parts of the CBD next to the river.

To the west of Brisbane at Ipswich, about 350 properties were inundated, while in NSW, 1000 people were evacuated and another 23,000 were stranded.

Authorities are yet to put an accurate figure on the damage bill but the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, estimates the cost to the federal government will be in the hundreds of millions. The Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman, is reported to have suggested a bill of more than $2.4 billion.

Bundaberg, which has a population of about 70,000 and is about 380 kilometres north of Brisbane, is the worst hit, with the council fearing more than 2000 homes flooded. Ocean-front communities were the first to get hit when tornadoes roared out of the sea and ripped roofs of homes last Saturday.

In Bundaberg West in Neville Drive, where Hills was living, most houses on the low side of the street were severely affected.

Many of the homes were investment properties completed in the past two years and thought to be above any possible flood level - based on the 1942 flood.

Brenton Towers, who bought a property in the street 12 months ago, said: ''We knew it was close to the Burnett River and the creek, and we asked a few questions of the real estate agent. She said the area did not flood in 2010. We checked with the Bundaberg Council and it wasn't shown on the flood map.

''I was horrified when I saw it. It's a brand-new property, only 12 months old.

''Ours is a long-term investment, and when we come to sell that's a concern as well.''